Why Worship YHWH (Responding to the Question: Is God egoistic and arrogant in demanding worship?)

While the question is surely poignant and is directed at the character and attribute of God, one better understand the presupposition of this question and why it is of such fundamental importance in the contemporary sphere of religious discussion.

Myths and different faith systems

In his “Parable of the Mad Man” in The Gay Science (1882), Friedrich Nietzsche caught his characters astounded, as well as his milieu, when he declared that “God is dead.” And in that elegiac series of rhetorical questions, one will notice this: “What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?” Note the phrases “festivals of atonement” and “sacred games” as antecedents to the verb “invent”. And if you’re going to read the entire parable, you would feel the burden of truth that by nature, humans are obliged, rather dutiful to invent rituals and ceremonies for a B-/being that is supposed to have caused all beings. Counter-intuitively, it was the great German atheist who conceded that man seeks someone/something to worship, i.e. to pay tribute to.

In every tribe of the world, peoples have their own ways of trying to appeal/appease their pantheons. It is as if these gods/goddesses demand several methods and articles of sacrifice, because they had been offended in one way or another. Paterson (1992) upholds that “[s]acrifice today is often understood in a wholly secular sense to mean renouncing something valuable so that something even more valuable may be obtained.” Movies like “Apocalypto” would show heart and organ sacrifice to the god of the sun and “Clash of the Titans” (either the old or the new rendition) justifies the “release of the Kraken” because people started refusing to pay homage to the gods, and so the princess Cassiopeia had to be ‘sacrificed’ for the salvation of the many from the anger of the monster, manifesting the ‘justice’ of the gods (Cf. Edith Hamilton and Bulfinch Mythology). At some points, Nietzsche’s observation was true: people invent sacred games to attain a sense of self-justification and collective sense of worth. The Jewish people did not ‘wander’ far from this observation. The Jews even displayed such behavior when they carved a golden calf, while waiting for Moses and their lingering fascination to the Ashera Poles in replacement of their allegiance to the Ark of the Covenant.

Worship and the Sacrificial System: A Jewish Gaze

So what do these observations tell us? They tell that it is man who always tries to reach the place of the divine. Carrying on from Paterson (1992), he relates:

“A significant feature of paganism was the extent to which it is concerned to relate human life to the process of nature. Israel too had its nature festivals, acknowledging the hand of God in the cycle of season and the fruitfulness of the earth, celebrating his goodness with the sacrifices and feasting. […]”

Thus we see that the entire process, in common usage is for the benefit of the gods as it appears. This is why people of the present sense view God as “egoistic” “arrogant” or “demanding” in terms of worship. In reality of God’s desire to commune with His created humans, however, this may have a little or nothing to do with God, i.e. the true one living God who abhorred idols and idolaters. People thought that God wants to take something from them as an act of their “worship” to Him. But this is exactly the opposite case. That people sought for other objects of worship, thinking such were gods, is the very truth that the Biblical God abhorred, thus the second commandment in the Decalogue (Exodus 20:4-5). The God of the Bible completely disdains false gods and idols created by humans after their own image or whims (Cf. Romans 1:19-21).

Flash forwarding to the New Testament, a careful reader would conclude that the entire Jewish sacrificial system is but a “foreshadow” of what Christ was to accomplish on the cross― an accomplishment every human tribe wanted to have, but could not― the accomplishment of atonement and reconciliation for the many with their Creator. The processes, ceremonies and rituals are mere “context-clues” to what Jesus―God incarnate, would do on the cross so that people, across culture, are not baffled by the event that shows how God longs to be in communion with the humans that rebelled against Him, but whom He loves nonetheless.

Worship: God’s Demand or Man’s Response?

Hundreds of years before the Ten Commandments was given, we would see for the first time when and where the word worship was used in the Bible: Genesis 22:5, famously known as the Sacrifice of Isaac:

“Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you’”.

While there are surely a lot of things to say about this monumental event, one will notice the word “worship” (Hebrew: sahah: to bow down). This first mention of the word “worship” clearly was not something that was demanded from man. It was Abraham’s response, as a free agent, to God’s “test”. And if you would use your electronic Bible in searching for “worship”, you would see that in all 192 flex results (at least in the ESV) the word “worship” was always an act of response to the God of Israel or differentiation from other gods. There was not an event that God, i.e. YHWH “demanded” the people to worship Him. Even at the moment of Jesus revealing himself to the woman at the well, he never said that “God is demanding for worshippers”, rather He said, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking (emphasis added) such people to worship Him” (John 4:23). God, the true one, never demands people to worship Him. People, in their authentic and genuine experience of Him, simply do worship Him. What He rather “demands” is the proper manner of expressing His worship: in Spirit and in Truth.

But why?

In his ground breaking book, Stealing from God, Turek (2014) enumerated the attributes of God[1]. These corroborate to this one attribute that puts a perfect coherence with God’s omnipotence: God’s omnibenevolence. In the words of A.W. Pink (1993), “God is summum bonum, the highest good”. Therefore, to say that God is “egoistic” and “arrogant” directly contradicts this “Holy Goodness”. But how else can we better justify that God is ultimately good, and a manifestation of it is that He does not force His created humans to worship Him? Let us first understand that God, in His Trinity, does not need any external affection to begin with[2]. In the harmony of the community of the Trinity, God the Father loves the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son, loves the Father and Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit loves the Father and the Son. All of the three persons express love and worship to one another creating a loving community and the perfect harmony and unity as God. Without mincing words, Lightner (1998) forwards:

“He (God) never existed apart from love. Even before He created people to be the objects of His love, He was love. Because God is perfect and holy, His love is perfect and holy.” (p. 116).

Out of this divine loving nature, hence the assertion “God is love” (1 John 4:8), comes the natural outworking of love, i.e. creating. Man now is the fruit of this creative love abounding in the Trinitarian Godhead. This alone bespeaks of the non-necessity of an external being for God to experience worship. “God’s love of the unlovely does not in any way the character of His love” (Lightner, 1998, p. 116).

While other worldviews/religions/belief systems paint a picture of anthropomorphic primordial being/-s who, out of boredom or insecurity, creates life and in turn require this living creature to pay homage to him/them, it is only Christianity where will we find love preceding life. Others have life preceding love, ergo the “demand” for worship.

Conclusions: No wonder why…

No wonder Paul, in the book of Romans 5:8 gives the statement:

“but God shows his love for us while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

which in conclusion, justifies what God did for the Israelites in Exodus 19:4. God did not wait for the enslaved Israelites to call and worship Him before delivering them out of Egypt. In the midst of their slavery, God took them as His own people and in the desire to be different from the neighboring cultures and tribes, then He gave the Ten Commandments through Moses, succeeded by the other laws (Ceremonial, Civil and Moral). All of which, the Scriptures say, are mere shadows of the good things that are coming (Cf. Hebrews 10:1).

For once, God did not demand worship. He freely extends His love even if/when we will not accept or recognize it. That surely does not show arrogance or selfishness or egotism, neither insecurity. The concordance of events in the Old and the New Testament surely proves that God, as a self-sufficient and necessary being is all good and is without a tinge of flaw. This, therefore, is an enough warrant that God deserves our allegiance and worship. Before we can even do things for God, He has first done everything for us. Then, all acts of worship are mere response to His holy love, holy justice and holy goodness: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship (emphasis added). Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:1-2). Note that worship is but the natural response humans ought to have to a God who could have not chosen to create us, but created us anyway, first because He is love, and second, because He loves us… each one of us.

References:

The Holy Bible. English Standard Version. 2001. Crossway

____________. New International Version. 1984, 2011. Biblica

Lightner, Robert, P. 1998. The God of the Bible and the Other Gods: Is the Christian God Unique among World Religions? Kregel Pub.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1882. The Gay Science. (The Parable of the Madman). http://www.historyguide.org/europe/madman.html

Paterson, David. 1992. Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship. Eerdmans Pub.

Pink, Arthur, W. 1993. Attributes of God. Chapel Library. Pensacola Florida

Renard, John. 2002. The Handy Religion Answer Book. Visible Ink. Detroit

Turek, Frank. 2014. Stealing from God: Why Atheists Need God to Make their Case. NavPress

[1] See p. xxi, Stealing from God: Why Atheists need God to make their Case, 2014. NavPress

[2] Contrast this to Muslims’ concept of a monadic (tawhid) god, i.e. a god that is a solely existent being outside time and space that needed to create something or someone to express love and receive worship. (Cf. Lightner, 1998 and Renard, 2002)